The Political Game Endures: Both Parties Treat Immigrants as Pawns

In Bob Dylan’s song “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” from his 1964 album, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Dylan lamented the 1963 assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith. While Dylan’s song specifically addresses Evers’ murder, it has broader lessons for the current immigration crisis. Much of the dispute about immigration and deportation is nothing more than partisan posturing, with immigrants — both documented and otherwise — caught in the crossfire of a cynical political war.